After two rejections, the Millharbour Urban Village, a four-tower development on the Isle of Dogs has finally been cleared.

Concerns had been raised by Canary Wharf councillor Andrew Wood about the density of the development and the impact it would have on surrounding infrastructure.

His initiative, the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum, has been pushing for greater safeguards against the overdevelopment of the land just to the south of Canary Wharf. Tower Hamlets Borough Council has just agreed the South Quay masterplan, although that is largely toothless.

Cllr Wood said: “We know there is a lot of development on the Isle of Dogs but it has been hard to get people to understand the scale of that development and to plan for how that level of density will work in practice.

“We have some 32,000 or so homes in the pipeline across the Isle of Dogs and Blackwall of which 14,000 already have planning permission. That could mean the population going from 40,000 to 105,000 people over 15+ years.

“That is more then what is happening at Nine Elms, Royal Docks, Greenwich Peninsula and the Olympic Village but it is spread across almost 50 different sites with almost as many developers.

Cllr Andrew Wood

“The solution we have come up with is to commission a 3D model of what the area might look like if every development currently in the pipeline was built. The buildings in white are pre-existing, the buildings in colour are in the pipeline.

“This is best viewed as an artistic interpretation of what the area might look like but it is all based on publicly available information and excludes development we know are active but for which we do not yet have hard information – like Skylines.

“Not all of this will happen and the Project Stone buildings will almost certainly change.”

“London is always said to be different to the rest of the UK, well South Quay, Millharbour and Blackwall will not be like the rest of London. They will be unique places that needs unique solutions which is why we set up the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum for residents and councillors to lead on this.”